a16z acqui-hires VC tech podcaster Erik Torenberg, who joins as new partner

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Andreessen Horowitz’s hiring spree continues. On Monday, Erik Torenberg announced that the giant VC firm had acquired his Turpentine podcast, with him joining as a general partner.

Torenberg’s podcast focuses mostly on interviewing VCs at a variety of firms about their approach to investing. Recent guests include Accel’s Andrew Braccia, Seven Seven Six’s Alexis Ohanian, and Benchmark’s Sarah Tavel and Eric Vishria.

Torenberg said he plans to continue with his podcast, but we’ll see if it changes direction. A16z creates a lot of corporate content, including its own podcasts. But the focus tends to be on founders rather than other VCs.

Torenberg makes sense as a hire for a16z, though. Beyond the pod, he was an early employee at Product Hunt and has been a successful angel investor and pro VC in the years since. He has spent the last seven years at firm Village Global. While there, he helped launch On Deck, a program that trains aspiring founders. His investments include Scale AI, Lattice, Figma, Perplexity, Replit, Flexport, and others, he says. 

The venture firm also recently hired former North Carolina congressman Patrick McHenry and, several months ago, former U.S. Marine Daniel Penny